The Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has released a first-of-its-kind report, State of our Schools, highlighting the critical need to modernize school facilities to meet current health, safety and educational standards.

The report states that schools are currently facing a $271 billion deferred maintenance bill just to bring the buildings up to working order – approximately $5,450 per student.

The last comprehensive report on America’s school facilities was conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 1995, and indicated that 15,000 U.S. schools were circulating air that, at the time, was deemed unfit to breathe. The USGBC report calls on the GAO to conduct an updated survey on the condition of America’s schools in order to paint a more complete picture of the scale and scope of today’s needs. The USGBC report also estimates the cost to bring schools into good repair and address modernization needs is $542 billion over the next 10 years for pre-kindergarten to Grade 12 school buildings.

“The places where our children learn matter. This report is a critical first step to taking action and creating healthy, sustainable school buildings,” says Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chair, USGBC. “Schools are the backbone of our communities and it is unacceptable that we would allow any of our children to show up in classrooms that compromise their ability to learn. We must do more.”

“Approximately 50 million students attend the nearly 100,000 public elementary and secondary schools in the United States. Many of these schools barely meet today’s standards, yet it’s been an astonishing 18 years since the last comprehensive study on school conditions was conducted,” says Rachel Gutter, director, Center for Green Schools at USGBC. “We are confident Congress will take up the charge to commission a new report on the state of educational facilities across the country. We can’t continue to ignore a problem just because we don’t understand the extent of it.”